Men in Black (film)
thumb|300px|right|The FREE feature film presented by Crackle and posted on YouTube.Men in Black is a 1997 science fiction/action/comedy film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, Will Smith as Agent J, and Vincent D'Onofrio as Edgar/"Bug". It was based on the Marvel Comic Series, The Men in Black by Lowell Cunningham. It was released on July 2, 1997 and gained $587 million worldwide, with a budget of $90 million. The film was spun off into an animated series, Men in Black: The Series, and two sequels, Men in Black II, released in 2002, and Men in Black III set to be released in 2012. Plot The film opens in some desert with a man known as "Nick the Dick" illegally bringing foreigners into the United States. He is stopped at a roadblock by INS Agents, and they find the foreigners. When Nick is about to be arrested, a black car driven by Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) with Agent D as a passenger pulls up, and they get out of the car claiming to be from the INS, division six. They search the foreigners and they find one that does not understand a word of Spanish. They send the rest of them back into Nick's truck and they take the one who doesn't understand Spanish further out to the desert, and discover it is a space alien; Mikey. They arrest Mikey, not knowing when he was let out of jail, when one of the agents, Janus, notices this. Mikey notices Janus, pushes Dee down, and starts running toward him. Kay tells Dee to shoot, but Dee is unable to, so Kay shoots, getting blue slime all over the policemen. The other policemen show up and K uses his Neuralyzer and convinces them that the blue slime is due to carelessness and the underground gas main. After a containment crew shows up, D apologizes for not shooting at Mikey, and since he is getting old, is neuralyzed by K. The scene cuts to a New York City street, where officer James Edwards (later Agent J, played by Will Smith) chases after a man who he does not know is a Cephalapoid. Edwards almost catches the man, but he gets away by drawing a weapon that evaporates. He runs once again and Edwards finally catches him on the roof of a building. The man claims "he's coming" and that the world will end. He blinks gills under his eyes, and then he willingly falls to his death. The seen cuts to a farm, where farmer Edgar (Vincent D'Onofrio) yells at his wife about dinner, saying that she is useless, and the only thing that pulls its weight is his truck. A spaceship crashes into the truck, destroying it. Edgar goes outside to investigate, and he is killed by the alien. The alien steals his skin, and then goes back into the house. He asks for sugar water, and then freaks Edgar's wife, Beatrice out so he can get away. He goes outside and picks his spaceship up, since he must take it with him to return home. Meanwhile, Edwards gives his incident report to his boss, and when he leaves, K steps in and asks Edwards about the weapon that evaporated. He asks if Edwards would recognize the weapon if seen again. He takes Edwards to Jack Jeebs' pawn shop, and after a little persuasion, Jeebs shows the guns and Edwards picks out the one he saw. K yells at Jeebs, thinking that the weapon was used for an assassination attempt, and that the alien who bought it was unlicensed. K neuralyzes Edwards and then decides that he should join the company he really works for, the Men in Black. He gives Edwards the card, and along with some other government agents, Edwards gets his training, and the MIB chief Zed (Rip Torn) neuralyzes the other men. K introduces Edwards to the Worms, who are in the coffee room, and then tells him that humans are not alone on the planet, and that aliens live among humans in secret. Back at Edgar's farm, the Bug (in Edgar's skin) kills an exterminator, and steals his truck to house his ship in. K gives Edwards until sunrise to think about joining MIB, and Edwards accepts. All of Edwards' identifying marks are erased, and he is renamed J. Edgar, in the meantime, follows an alien named Gentle Rosenburg in the exterminator's truck. J is given his first assignment with K to follow an alien outside his boundary. The alien is in a rush to get off the planet with his wife, even though they have a newborn baby. K finds this unusual, and decides to check out the news to see if anything has happened. He sees an article written by Edgar's wife, "alien stole my husband's skin," and goes to investigate with J. Meanwhile, Edgar follows Rosenburg to meet with another alien of the same race, who informs him that a bug landed on the planet and that he must get off. Edgar kills both aliens, and takes a possesion of theirs, believing it to be the Galaxy, which is a source of power the size of a marble. K and J pose as FBI agents and question the wife. They learn about the sugar water, and once they have all the information they need, she is neuralyzed. J convinces K to ad lib the memory she gets, and J extends it. K analyzes the dirt that the alien may have left a spectral trail on, and discovers that they are after a Bug. He tells J that they will watch the morgues with the bug in town. A mortician, Laurel Weaver (Linda Fiorentino), examines the bodies and finds them unusual. J and K pose as doctors, they examine the bodies, and they discover that Rosenburg isn't really dead yet. His last words are "to prevent war, the Galaxy is on Orion's Belt." K neuralyzes Weaver, and they head back to headquarters. Edgar is banging the possesion, but it spills jewels form Rosenburg's jewelry store, and it is not the Galaxy that he is looking for. He resumes his search, while J and K look at Orion's belt, but Zed thinks that they heard wrong. They then discover that a bunch of aliens have left the planet, and they notice an Arquilian (Rosenburg's race) battleship above the earth conveying a message. K and J go down to Rosenburg's jewelry store to find more clues, and Zed tells K to give J a weapon. K gives J the "Noisy Cricket", and because of its size, J doesn't think it will protect him. Edgar gets to Rosenburg's before J & K do, however, and he breaks in to look for the Galaxy. He sees a picture of Rosenburg's cat, who was by his side at the time of his death. Edgar sees a marble on the cat's collar, which he thinks is the Galaxy. He notices the exterminator's truck being towed, and goes out to investigate. K & J arrive with their weapons, notice the havoc that has been wreaked upon the store, and J finds it unusual that anyone has broken in without taking any jewels. They suspect that the bug is behind it. They hear a shot, and they see Edgar walking with a gun in his hand. Edgar gets in the tow truck, drives away, and J fires the noisy cricket, which is, to his surprise, extremely powerful. He fires the gun two more times, when K tells him not to shoot in front of witnesses. K asks Zed for a Containment Crew, and he is told that the Arquillians want the Galaxy. Edgar, in the meantime, asks a man "Where do you keep your dead?" and eventually gets "city morgue" out of him. Edgar steals some postcards, then proceeds for the morgue. K and J talk to an alien dog named Frank and they are told that the Galaxy is on Earth, and that it's tiny. J and K are confused, but when they see Frank bark at a cat they know where to find the Galaxy. Edgar goes into the morgue and threatens Weaver for the cat (its name was Orion). J enters the morgue, and then discovers that Weaver is being held hostage by Edgar, and that Edgar beat the MIB to the punch. He escapes with Weaver and tells her to take him to the World's Fair, where there are working flying saucers. K tells J not to worry about him, since they have his ship he can't get off the planet. The Arquillians fire a warning shot and say that they will go to war in an hour. J thinks that the bug is going to leave the planet via the flying saucers at the World's Fair, since all the other transports off the planet have left. Edgar arrives at the fair before J & K, and he eats the Galaxy that he got off Orion's collar. Edgar drags Weaver with him while getting into a saucer, and J & K arrive just in time to save her. They shoot down the flying saucer Edgar takes off in, and he gets out. The bug takes Edgar's skin off, revealing his true form. He eats the guns. K tempts the bug to eat him to get the guns back, and tells J to not let him get on the second ship and create a distraction for the bug. J begins fighting with the bug by stepping on cockroaches, and K shoots his way out of the bug's digestive system. They get the Galaxy back and deliver it to the Arquillians. K tells J to neuralyze him, since he wasn't training a partner, but rather a replacement. K is neuralyzed, and Weaver joins the MIB as Agent L. Cast *Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K *Will Smith as Agent J *Rip Torn as Zed *Vincent D'Onofrio as Edgar/Edgar the Bug *Linda Fiorentino as Laurel Weaver/Agent L *David Cross as Newton Cameos The following appear on the computer screen as aliens: *Al Roker *Isaac Mizrahi *Danny DeVito *''Men in Black'' Director Barry Sonnenfeld *Chloe Sonnenfeld (Barry's daughter) *Sylvester Stallone *Dionne Warwick *Newt Gingrich *Anthony Robbins *George Lucas *''Men in Black'' Executive Producer Steven Spielberg Production Differences from The Men in Black This film is notable for the differences from the original Comic Book Series. First, in the comics, the MiB monitored all paranormal activity (from ghosts to demons to aliens), however the movie, and everything beyond the movie, the MiB focuses only on aliens. Second, in the comics, the MiB was more ruthless, even murdering anyone who got in the way. In the movie, it shows a much more humor side to the MiB. Third, Agent J's race was changed to African-American (he was Caucasian in the comics). Reception The film recieved overwhelming positive reviews, and gaining a 91% by Rotten Tomatoes. Category:Films